Topic split - gap between onsight and redpoint performance

[Bradders]

At the time I did it (soft 8a) I'd done 2 x 7c, 1 x 7c+.

My current routes pyramid is exactly this :lol:

I guess I am surprised because I always had loads of routes at grade-1 as my max went from 5b and upwards. The only grade I ever skipped was 8a+ (but my first two 8bs are both probable 8a+s so in reality I did not skip 8a+).

I think the thing is people don't keep a logbook of indoor routes in the same way as they do outdoor. This is even harder with bouldering because the boulders just have grade ranges and you would have to guess the individual grade. I've been meaning to start doing this with lead at least though because it gives you a real perspective on your long term volume - I know I would have easily 3-4 times as many 8a (and vastly more if we included 7th grade) if I had all the indoor stuff logged, for example - I also currently live in an area with a fairly limited amount of 8a+ that aren't hard horrible sandbagged slabs on slippy lime so this does also limit the volume that gets done outdoors.

Indoor climbing doesn't count.

 

[spidermonkey09]

Indoor climbing doesn't count.

This, obviously.

 

[andy moles]

I am surprised that these numbers are so small, but I think it goes to show that most people do a lot of their climbing indoors.

Totally anecdotal, but I'm not sure about that conclusion. When I climbed 8a I'd done one 7c+ and one 7c, but I climb very little indoors. I'd be more tempted to conclude that people are more motivated by doing a new number than by going to very nearly as much effort for a number they've already done, at least in the case of those who don't spend much time projecting.

 

[Will Hunt]

Also, if you're capable of climbing 8a on the main Leeds Wall then you're probably booking a trip to Flatanger to onsight Silence. I don't think I've ever done anything harder than 7a on there.

 

[Bradders]

I am surprised that these numbers are so small, but I think it goes to show that most people do a lot of their climbing indoors.

Totally anecdotal, but I'm not sure about that conclusion. When I climbed 8a I'd done one 7c+ and one 7c, but I climb very little indoors. I'd be more tempted to conclude that people are more motivated by doing a new number than by going to very nearly as much effort for a number they've already done, at least in the case of those who don't spend much time projecting.

Yeah definitely. Only indoor climbing I do is training in my shed (99.9% of the time).

 

[MischaHY]

Indoor climbing doesn't count.

Ah so you don't get fatigued or have any training effect from climbing indoors? Must be nice... :whistle:

Indoor mileage obviously very relevant as part of understanding what effort was put into progressing from one point to another. This can then inform future expectations. Part of this information gathering involves assessing intensity of volume by grade. All valuable information IMO but feel free to 'not count' it :lol:

 

[spidermonkey09]

The point is surely that the data you're gathering is essentially junk for the reasons you've identified. Who knows what a grade a problem inside actually is when its in a range, which themselves bear absolutely no resemblence to outdoor climbing? Grading regimes differ hugely from wall to wall, even more so on lead walls where. Even if you think it does count, I'm sceptical how much use the information actually is. It would be useful if you were using it to solely track indoor performance, but its of limited utility crossing over to outdoor climbing. Just like my ability to tech up 7A grit slabs bears absolutely no relevance to my ability to climb inside.

I don't think I personally can discern anything useful from my climbing inside other than 'I'm going ok on the board' or 'I feel like shit on the board.' This *might* mean I can track my performance based on that feeling alone but board grades are such arrant nonsense that attempting to codify them into a usable performance tracker is pointless for me. I don't see why this would be different for plastic boulders or indoor lead routes.

 

[remus]

The point is surely that the data you're gathering is essentially junk for the reasons you've identified. Who knows what a grade a problem inside actually is when its in a range, which themselves bear absolutely no resemblence to outdoor climbing? Grading regimes differ hugely from wall to wall, even more so on lead walls where. Even if you think it does count, I'm sceptical how much use the information actually is. It would be useful if you were using it to solely track indoor performance, but its of limited utility crossing over to outdoor climbing. Just like my ability to tech up 7A grit slabs bears absolutely no relevance to my ability to climb inside.

I don't think I personally can discern anything useful from my climbing inside other than 'I'm going ok on the board' or 'I feel like shit on the board.' This *might* mean I can track my performance based on that feeling alone but board grades are such arrant nonsense that attempting to codify them into a usable performance tracker is pointless for me. I don't see why this would be different for plastic boulders or indoor lead routes.

I think the underlying point, that people might have weird-looking outdoor pyramids backed by significant indoor volume, remains though. The fact that cataloging that indoor volume is hard is kinda beside the point (unless your point is that it's hard to record indoor climbs in a meaningful way, which I don't think anyone is arguing about).

 

[teestub]

I don't think I personally can discern anything useful from my climbing inside other than 'I'm going ok on the board' or 'I feel like shit on the board.' This *might* mean I can track my performance based on that feeling alone but board grades are such arrant nonsense that attempting to codify them into a usable performance tracker is pointless for me. I don't see why this would be different for plastic boulders or indoor lead routes.

This is interesting. For me there’s a direct correlation between my indoor and outdoor climbing performance, and often before trips I’ll prioritise indoor over rock as you can get a better quality session in than you can outside, particularly on grit.

I think what grade is attached to something is really here not there, you know what’s hard for you, and you know what you couldn’t do a few weeks ago, or on the board a few months ago, and you can therefore track your progress. I think it’s also possible to have a decent stab at the actual grades of board things when you’ve climbed enough outdoor stuff at similar angles, should you want to record it more quantitatively.

 

[MischaHY]

I think the underlying point, that people might have weird-looking outdoor pyramids backed by significant indoor volume, remains though. The fact that cataloging that indoor volume is hard is kinda beside the point (unless your point is that it's hard to record indoor climbs in a meaningful way, which I don't think anyone is arguing about).

This was what I was getting at. Apologies for the snarky message previously.

 

[spidermonkey09]

I think the underlying point, that people might have weird-looking outdoor pyramids backed by significant indoor volume, remains though. The fact that cataloging that indoor volume is hard is kinda beside the point (unless your point is that it's hard to record indoor climbs in a meaningful way, which I don't think anyone is arguing about).

Yeah, they might, although I don't think its at all uncommon to be a keen outdoor sport climber but not climb at all at indoor lead walls, so I'd be dubious how likely it is. Maybe cause we don't have many really good extensive leads walls in the UK, the trend is toward good bouldering facilities?

I'm more making an open value judgement about whether its worth logging indoor lead routes or loops on a circuit board to be honest! :worms: :tease: to me be that would pointless, taxonomy for the sake of it. I'm trying to work out why I think that and I think its because it just feels so pointless and fundamentally ephemeral data when the routes are taken down every month or whatever. Theres nothing to refer back to other than 'how it felt personally' and surely the whole point of a lot of training is that its measurable, hence the effectiveness of fingerboarding and different size edges, numbered campus rungs etc etc. Obviously theres variation in these things too but nothing like the variation in indoor grades.

Just my view obvs, nothing personal (no snark detected Mischa!)

 

[spidermonkey09]

you know what’s hard for you, and you know what you couldn’t do a few weeks ago, or on the board a few months ago, and you can therefore track your progress. I think it’s also possible to have a decent stab at the actual grades of board things when you’ve climbed enough outdoor stuff at similar angles, should you want to record it more quantitatively.

Fair dos! I honestly have zero idea what grade stuff on a board actually is, perhaps because I don't have your experience of steep bouldering. I can get a sense of when I'm going well but there are too many variables to know whether its because I'm actually getting better or not I find; my performance is much more up and down on a board than on other styles. Other things I find make a big difference to me on the board are when and what I've eaten that day, frequency of fingerboarding that week, and how I've slept. I don't record my sleep and diet though; maybe thats my missing puzzle piece?!

 

[jwi]

I don't think I personally can discern anything useful from my climbing inside other than 'I'm going ok on the board' or 'I feel like shit on the board.' This *might* mean I can track my performance based on that feeling alone but board grades are such arrant nonsense that attempting to codify them into a usable performance tracker is pointless for me. I don't see why this would be different for plastic boulders or indoor lead routes.

I think it’s also possible to have a decent stab at the actual grades of board things when you’ve climbed enough outdoor stuff at similar angles, should you want to record it more quantitatively.

I always do this. I use grades to decide how difficult training routes or boulders should be (both inside and outside). How else would I be able to know in advance what difficulty I should choose for the individual boulders in a 4x4 for example? Or how difficult a 25 move circuit should be so that it can be completed approximately 5-6 times with 8 min rest between the sets? As the grades indoors often are complete bollocks I just assign my own grades (based on how the same difficulty would feel for me outdoors).

 

[Fiend]

Warning: Epically long post.

Some empiricial data to ponder

Data scraped in 2017 from a popular provider of online ticklists provides some data on climbers performances. As users get “points” for climbing routes of a certain grade, they are incentivised to log routes or boulders at the highest possible grade they can get away with, regardless of what they think. Also, there is no system of signing off the ascents by belayers so not all ascents logged will have taken place. However, noisy data is better than no data.

As we can see, the best performance ever on fully worked routes has a somewhat bell-shaped distribution with median around 7b and with a premium for climbing a route graded 8a. (Much like there are lots of Marathon runners finishing just under 3 hours, but not many in just over 3 hours.)

The median best performance is surprisingly stable over time and shows signs of only slow increase over fifteen years:

year                "2003" "2004" "2005" "2006" "2007" "2008" "2009" "2010" "2011" "2012" "2013" "2014" "2015" "2016" "2017"
Median of top grade "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b"   "7b+"  "7b+"  "7b+"  "7b+"  "7b+"

As some users never climb in the redpoint style the premium for climbing 8a is actually understated in the chart above.

If we look at the distribution of only redpoint ascents:

we see that the mode is 8a, even though the median is 7b+

Climbers who can get up an 8a with enough work are clearly more likely to put in the required effort than those who can get ut 7c+ with enough work.

This effect is slightly less pronounced if we look at ascents at a stable level. Here are the distributions for highest onsight grade and highest grade achieved “Second Go”

There is still clearly a premium for ascending 8a in faster styles as well.

For bouldering

The median of the best performance in bouldering is not improving any quicker than those of sport climbing

year                "2003" "2004" "2005" "2006" "2007" "2008" "2009" "2010" "2011" "2012" "2013" "2014" "2015" "2016"
Median of top grade "7B"   "7B"   "7B"   "7A+"  "7A+"  "7B"   "7B"   "7B"   "7B"   "7B"   "7B"   "7B"   "7B+"  "7B+" 
                    [,15] 
year                "2017"
Median of top grade "7B+"

To compare highest red-point grade with highest onsight grade we only look at users who have logged a reasonable amount of climbs in both styles.

Say at least both 100 red-point and onsight ascents.

Scatterplot

Grouped boxplot:

As we can see, the best redpoint and onsight grade are highly correlated ($R^2=$0.8716624). There seems to be about 2 full letter-grades between the hardest redpoint and the hardest onsight for climbers having climbed 8b or harder, as per JiBe’s old rule-of-thumb. The median best onsight grade for a climber having redpointed 8c is 8a etc. There are two and a half letter grades between the redpoint and the onsight grade for climbers having climbed from 7c to 8a+ at best. Fully half of the climbers having redpointed 8a have onsighted 7b+. For climbers having redpointed no harder than 7b+ there is just two letter grades difference.

Ideally the difference should be the same across the grades. The discrepancy could be explained by significant grade inflation in the higher grades (that is, the difference between becomes smaller the harder the routes) or that elite climbers are not pursuing onsight ascents outdoors for whatever reason.

In case you are wondering, there is no big difference is we look at the highest grade achieved redpoint vs onsight in a single year.

Relation between performances in bouldering and sport-climbing


There is a fairly strong relationship between best bouldering grade and best redpoint grade as well. This is of course unsurprising since harder routes generally have harder cruxes. For climbers who have logged at least N=100 boulders and the same amount of redpoint ascents, it seems like the typical bouldering strength required to climb an 8a route is about 7B+ whereas 25% of those who can do 7B have also done 8a. The lowest bouldering strength required for someone doing a fair amount of bouldering to do 8a is 7A.

If any thread needed Johnny Brown's involvement, this one is it ;D

 

[Johnny Brown]

Given the subjective nature of the grading scale I need to see a Bayesian analysis before commenting.

 

[Bradders]

The point is surely that the data you're gathering is essentially junk for the reasons you've identified. Who knows what a grade a problem inside actually is when its in a range, which themselves bear absolutely no resemblence to outdoor climbing? Grading regimes differ hugely from wall to wall, even more so on lead walls where. Even if you think it does count, I'm sceptical how much use the information actually is. It would be useful if you were using it to solely track indoor performance, but its of limited utility crossing over to outdoor climbing. Just like my ability to tech up 7A grit slabs bears absolutely no relevance to my ability to climb inside.

I don't think I personally can discern anything useful from my climbing inside other than 'I'm going ok on the board' or 'I feel like shit on the board.' This *might* mean I can track my performance based on that feeling alone but board grades are such arrant nonsense that attempting to codify them into a usable performance tracker is pointless for me. I don't see why this would be different for plastic boulders or indoor lead routes.

I think the underlying point, that people might have weird-looking outdoor pyramids backed by significant indoor volume, remains though. The fact that cataloging that indoor volume is hard is kinda beside the point (unless your point is that it's hard to record indoor climbs in a meaningful way, which I don't think anyone is arguing about).

I made my original comment that indoors doesn't count thinking about the fact that climbing is a tactical/mental and skill based sport as much as it is a physical one. Indoor climbing bears so little resemblance to rock climbing in 2/3 of those areas that I think including indoor routes would massively obfuscate things. Stu's experience of being burnt off by Barrows in Greece rings true here. As does seeing so many London based gym-honed climbers completely flailing on grades they'd piss on plastic.

That said you can absolutely track indoor training and I have done in the past. I think Steve Bechtel talks about it in his Logical Progression book; there's even a formula you can use to work out your "session density" and "difficulty ratio", with the inputs being problem difficulty and the number of moves! The idea being that you gradually progress your session density and difficulty and avoid big spikes which would be injurious.

Of course, doing all that quickly gets into the weeds and I really don't think it's helpful at all.

 

[teestub]

Fair dos! I honestly have zero idea what grade stuff on a board actually is, perhaps because I don't have your experience of steep bouldering. I can get a sense of when I'm going well but there are too many variables to know whether its because I'm actually getting better or not I find; my performance is much more up and down on a board than on other styles. Other things I find make a big difference to me on the board are when and what I've eaten that day, frequency of fingerboarding that week, and how I've slept. I don't record my sleep and diet though; maybe thats my missing puzzle piece?!

These factors must also impact your outdoor performance too I would assume? There will always be localised peaks and troughs in training performance, but a training block measured over a few months will show improvements in the areas you’ve been training.

On the sleep side, I’ll always remember Stallion’s brother Drew telling me that the duration and quality of sleep he had (he did record it) was the best predictor out of anything for his climbing performance.

 

[Bonjoy]

If only we could go back in a time machine to when grades were devised and make them all alphabetic. It's so ridiculous how slavishly people chase the next big round number. Nothing illustrates this better than a V10 being simultaneously a glorious shining prize in the USA/Australia, and the ultimate unloved runt child in Europe at 7C+.

 

[Fultonius]

If only we could go back in a time machine to when grades were devised and make them all alphabetic. It's so ridiculous how slavishly people chase the next big round number. Nothing illustrates this better than a V10 being simultaneously a glorious shining prize in the USA/Australia, and the ultimate unloved runt child in Europe at 7C+.

I take it 30 in route grades is quite a milestone in Aus?

 

[Bonjoy]

Yep. It's also a big thing in Oz being able to climb your age-grade. I spluttered out at 31. Not sure if anyone has made it past 36.